


Pretty Little Liar

by yueliangs_wonderland



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/M, Gen, Hanahaki Disease
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-09
Updated: 2019-01-09
Packaged: 2019-10-07 09:40:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17363603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yueliangs_wonderland/pseuds/yueliangs_wonderland
Summary: The feeling is Petunias and pain when Moon Taeil has a soulmate that doesn't love him.





	Pretty Little Liar

Taeil wondered when the last time you felt warm was. You had always been a beacon of warmth for him, something for him to be grounded in when he wasn’t working himself into the ground. He had always considered himself lucky that you were his soulmate, so beautiful and kind and all his. 

Unfortunately for Taeil, his story never ended well. 

Things always ended up muddled for him when they should be clear cut in black and white. It started when he first became friends with Sicheng all those years ago, and then Yuta showed up and it was less about friendship and more about possession. In Yuta’s defense, he really did try to be cordial with Taeil, but he only saw him as a threat. Sicheng didn’t really like his friends fighting over petty things. And Taeil is nothing if not petty, so that was the end of that story. 

However, where one story closes, another one opens. After Taeil ended up ruining two perfectly good friendships, he decides rather impulsively to ruin a perfectly good romance as well. Albeit she wasn’t his soulmate he did really like her or he thought he might have if his heart wasn’t encased in a thick wall of ice at the time. He didn’t really do well with long term relationships before meeting you, and so that was the end of that too. 

Maybe that’s why he’s suffering with you now. The red string of fate that tied you both together seemingly wrapping itself around his neck like a noose and he would willingly leap off of something to hang himself for you. 

He knows that’s not very healthy too. But he isn’t sure if that is something he should be feeling for his soulmate. For you. 

Taeil loves you, he loves you so much that it aches in his very being. He loves you so much that it scares him. He loves you so much that even though he knows you lay with other lovers at night as he lay awake at the thought of someone else all over you, he still stays. He loves you so much that even though he can feel the scorn itching at his chest and strangling his lungs, he can’t bear to leave you. 

He knows he needs to leave. 

It comes in the form of brightly colored petunia petals that he hacks up one particular afternoon when you don’t make it in even after the sun rises high in the sky. He thought it was fitting for the two of you. You had always soothed his soul and he figured you had always resented being his soulmate. 

He wonders if it had always been that way? Maybe a small seed planted in your heart that began to grow day in and day out, blooming only after years of being carefully groomed in mockery of him. He wanted you to love him, not despise him. 

He needs you to say it to him. 

He doesn’t want to really hear you say it, he doesn’t crave that torture like his only friends Jungwoo and Dongyoung think he does. But in order to really know if you hate him as much as the flowers in his lungs say he does, he needs you to say it. 

Of course you do. 

“I think we should take a break Taeil. I just feel suffocated, I need some time alone to think.” He sat there staring at the bruise on your neck you hadn’t even tried to hide and wants to spit at you. He was the one with the flowers in his lungs and you’re suffocating? He doesn’t know if he wants to laugh or cry, but he realizes his body decides that both would be fitting. 

“Please don’t cry, I still love you.” It’s a lie that has him running to the bathroom sink to cough up a full bloom of the pink flower. He can only stare at it as it mixes with his blood and your shriek of horror doesn’t even register in his ears until you’re crying and pulling at his arm to take him to the hospital. 

“It’s only curable if he finds his soulmate. In the end, if the person he loves does not love him, the flower will choke him to death. I’m sorry, there is nothing that we can do.” Taeil can hear you yelling at the doctor about being his soulmate, but he doesn’t actually hear the words coming from your mouth. Everything is buzzing and he feels numb. It hurt him to breathe, but it hurt even more knowing that you resented him so much. Or was it him resenting you? He was sure that wasn’t how this disease worked. He contemplates if he really only loves himself, but when you pull on his hand to tug him out of the doctors office, there's a warmth that spreads through his chest. There in the lobby, you squeeze his hand in reassurance that you would fix it as if you weren’t the one who put the flowers there in the first place. 

For a while, Taeil feels fine. You finally sleep next to him again and he can melt into your warmth at the end of a long day. He can give you kisses that you don’t shrug off and you let him make love to you and mark you the way he wants to. Or at least he thinks he's fine, until one night. Nearly half a year has passed, and he's sheathed inside you when you moan another's name and he's hacking up petals so thick he thinks he might die there on top of you. You try to apologize, to make him a cup of that herbal tea to combat the flowers you’d found but he doesn’t want you to touch him. 

“I want you to say it to me.” His voice is hard, despite it being hoarse from the hacking. You want to play dumb, but you know better. 

“I want to take a break Taeil, please.” You aren’t telling him what he wants to hear, but he wants to believe even if only for a fleeting moment that you will come back to him. 

‘You don’t’, he remarks bitterly to himself after one of his routine hospital checkups. The branches are growing thicker and Jungwoo has to roll him around in a wheelchair because it hurts too much to walk. He feels his chest is heavy all the time so he hunches over. He thanks Jungwoo for bringing him to the hospital like he’s been doing for the last few weeks now. The younger boy had essentially turned into his live in nurse and Taeil is grateful for the certification and the company. He really doesn’t want to die alone. 

Dongyoung was very specific in his instructions to Jungwoo to always confiscate Taeil’s phone after a call or text to his family or himself. He didn’t want him to scroll through social media to check on you, but he hadn’t accounted for Taeil being crafty enough to memorize Jungwoo’s passcode and snatch his phone while he was sleeping. 

The photographic proof of you with someone else commemorating your anniversary together is enough to put him in the hospital for a few days. Now Jungwoo isn’t allowed to keep a passcode for more than six hours and Dongyoung sleeps in Taeil’s apartment too. Taeil knows they just want the best for him but he wants nothing more than to tell you off. He wants to make you feel guilty, he wants you to feel the pain he feels. He wants to congratulate you on killing him with petunias. 

Moon Taeil wonders when the last time he felt warm was. He remembers very vaguely the warmth of someone he had once loved with every fiber of his being, but it feels like such a distant memory now. It had been a long battle, and he lasted much longer than the doctors had thought he would. Ten long years of fighting with these stupid flowers in his lungs that would die and bloom once more just like clockwork when you’d come and leave him. The second time you did it Jungwoo refused to let you see him anymore, but Taeil always found a way to leave his heart open for you. 

He wishes he hadn’t. 

Now as he chokes on the flowers he once had no idea of that suckles on his last breaths of air, he notices you. You look the same as always, warm smile but sad eyes and he hates you in those last moments. 

If only he had stopped waiting and hated you sooner.


End file.
